Seeing

February 7, 2010

I'm not used to not having the sharpest eyes on the boat. Time was, I'd be the first to spot the buoy, to see that the light in the distant ship was green and not red, indicating a starboard-facing view. Today, I have reading glasses tucked away in every corner of the boat, and my brother Stephen (who's suspended his life as an architect in these no-new-construction times) is the first to see things. Perhaps not coincidentally, he is deaf in one ear, the result of a bicycle accident as a teenager. He and I were riding up to get some pizzas, and in a usual-for-Stephen bit of derring-do, he carried the pizzas home - look Ma - no hands! One turn too sharp and over the curb he flew, landing on his head and bleeding from an ear. I ran to an adjacent house and called home to let our Mom know.
My mother, who could see around corners sometimes, reacted with calm borne of raising six sons, and (as the story goes) told us simply to call an ambulance and she'd meet us at the hospital. By that time, we had our own orthopedic surgeon on call, and were on a first name basis with the nurses. Since then, Stephen's sight seems to have compensated for his lack of hearing, and he's the one to see the buoy and to distinguish the direction a passing ship is taking.

Well after the bicycle accident, when I decided to quit college, abandon my full scholarship, and go sailing on the oceans for a year, my mother's reaction was equally calm (although now, as parent, I can only imagine her torn feelings). Beyond calm, she supported my decision, a decision with a lifelong impact. I changed my course of study from the sciences to the humanities, and learned to see more clearly the world around me. Facts mattered, but facts were not the only things that mattered. That was also the year I deepened my desire and experience to sail extensively at some point in my life.

Since then, my mother has passed away, her eyesight clear to the end even as her mind's ability to process the images faded inexorably. She would have liked to see where her sons are today - together on a boat named Grace, pursuing a dream that perhaps she saw in my eyes when I broached the subject of leaving school.

Here, tonight, beyond the raft of glasses I've managed to strew about Grace's cabins, I've got other compensating strategies for my slowly deteriorating eyesight. I can listen to the sounds of the boat, and know when we're off course by the different sound the water makes as our angle into the waves changes. I can feel the wind on my cheeks, and can 'see' the wind change direction. I know by the pattern of the boat's rocking and heeling motions whether the waves and swells are increasing or subsiding. And tonight, even with these aging eyes, I can see - against a black sea - a lane of light stretching from Grace to the horizon, reflecting a ribbon of light from a low-lying southwestern star so bright that it lays a path from here to the horizon on a flat ocean. And I don't need the eyes I had thirty years ago when I left school to now see streaks of shooting stars against the fuzzy background of a star-saturated Milky Way, or the smeared light of a rising gibbous moon behind the eastern clouds.

Writing all of this on the midnight watch - knowing all of this - helps me see why I've come to this place - 16 degrees north, 75 degrees west - on a road lit by stars, flanked by the Milky Way to the west and a rising moon to the east. At night, we seem to see things clearly. Maybe my mother could see that Stephen would be fine; maybe she could see that I would be happier leaving school for a year. I know I'm happy that I can still see stars shine on the tops of Caribbean waters. I also know I'm happy there's a pair of glasses within reach wherever I am on Grace, and that my mother supported my decision to go sailing, and I'm happy that my brother is here to help me see.

Received on 2/7/10 From Jon Glaudemans